SigmaWay Blog

Interconnected devices enable, round the clock monitoring of vulnerable patients and also forestall further health threats. Three ways, enabling IOT, benefit healthcare management are;
i. Supervision of drugs and prevention of further health issues- is possible by integrating medical devices into a network of monitoring devices, along with the maintenance of data flow into a centralized repository, to minimize human transcription errors. IOT enables fast access to patient data which helps in detecting drug usage anomalies and even predicting imminent health threats.
ii. Maintenance of hand hygiene, in order to reduce infections- is possible by electronic monitoring, provided by IOT, of say, how many times a hospital personnel visits a hand washing station.
iii. Keeping track of at-risk patients, in their home environment- is again, possible by the amalgamation of monitoring devices and seamless network.  
Read more at: http://healthitanalytics.com/news/three-ways-the-internet-of-things-can-improve-patient-safety

With the marketers trying to woo customers with all their grit, it's customer data that has proved to be their friend indeed. Data driven marketing increases the ROI to many fold. This is now a well-documented fact. Larisa Bedgood (author) in an article in the blog Datamentors talks about the following 3 ways to extract more revenue from data driven marketing:

• Break Down the Silos

• A 360-degree customer view

• Personalized experience is what customers want. 

For an extensive account of these 3 keys to higher ROI hit the link http://www.datamentors.com/blog/3-ways-data-driven-marketing-drives-higher-roi

The amalgamation of big data and analytics isn't enough to deliver insights especially in the area of pricing and margin optimization. In this competitive world, every company strives to be better than the other and some have already gone ahead to boost sales and margins by using levers. Here are five important tips to ensure an improved pricing and margin optimization. They are:

•  Increased focus on revenue management rather than on pricing and promotions.
•  Hiring outstanding candidates and having a more effective organizational structure.
•  Adopting decision based data management techniques.
•  Choosing or designing tools using easy-to-use solutions that are understood by all.
•  Having dedicated leaders who can drive all others team to achieve an insight-driven leadership.

Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7715-it-takes-more-than-big-data-to-get-pricing-and-margin-optimisation-right-for-your-business

The success of a company is vested on its employees. It’s the employees who ensure that resources of the company are utilized to their full potential. But at times it becomes difficult to identify the best members of the staff. Workforce analytics comes into play here. Workforce analytics enables organizations to get a complete picture of their workforce and identify ways to improve it. It allows organizations to identify and retain their most important staff. Workforce analytics involves analyzing large sets of employee data to find correlations and patterns. Statistical techniques like tests of significance, factor analysis and multivariate analysis are applied and charts are produced to bring together all information available about a team. HR department can then leverage these insights to achieve high retention rates. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/workforce-analytics-are-you-retaining-your-highest-performers

As researchers and scientists get access to the plethora of information of weather patterns, they are getting better equipped to deal with upcoming disasters. This data however is massive and highly complex thus the data gathering serves as only a part of the solution. Governments today are realizing the need for data-driven forecasting to keep up with the volume and variety of information required for smarter forecasting. Predicting weather anomalies more effectively could save thousands of lives during natural disasters. The process requires delivering more accurate forecasts and delivering them sooner. Data analysts use the voluminous data gathered to develop reliable forecasting models. Making sense of the data and building actionable intelligence will largely help protect the public from natural disasters. Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/centurylink/2015/07/08/hurricane-forecasts-get-better-give-more-warning-thanks-to-big-data/

Lean Six Sigma or LSS is a combination of two business management techniques, where lean strategizes in waste reduction and Six Sigma uses a methodical five step (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve &Control) approach to solve business problems. LSS helps to save money, optimize and streamline internal processes and communication. Implementation helps in efficiency, higher quality and better customer service. The benefits are: 1. Increased Efficiency
2. Higher Quality Output
3. Better Customer Service
4. A Safer Workplace
5. Program Implementation. Read more at: http://www.pddnet.com/articles/2015/06/benefits-lean-six-sigma-methodology-culture

Public Sectors Bank (PSBs) can’t lend as long as they have huge Non Performing Assets (NPAs). According to the latest financial stability report by RBI, stressed assets have risen from 10.7% to 11.1% in March 2015 from Sept 2014. The process of dealing with loans is very slow which leads to inefficiency. In order to de stress these assets, either provide extra capital to PSBs or get rid of NPAs from the balance sheet. The former is difficult since the scale of capital needed for the purpose is huge, which the current fiscal situation would not permit, latter being the only resort available. Cleaning up NPAs would also give the much needed capital for lending. Read more at: http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/Myth-n-Reality/unburden-banks-of-non-performing-assets-for-faster-economic-recovery/

There is a call for new school of cyber defense,since the perimeter security cloud cannot prevent cyber-attacks anymore. The first step is to mitigate the damage. The best way is to run a fully updated , layered  ,in depth set of security tools and educating the end users about how to falling for attack lures. Second step is to prepare for the aftermath of the attack. The approach here should be data centric. Prepare a written plan as to who to contact and what to do in case of security breach. Read more at: http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/twitter-chat-how-to-prepare-for-a-cyberattack/a/d-id/1321216

If the country is changing faster than the expectations, then organizations are faced with the challenge of moving with those changes. It is affected by fast evolving markets, ever changing technology, increasing competition and changing preference. So how to react to these changes? First is by gathering intelligence, using big data analytics to discover patterns by tracking commercial data, for example in consumer spending, movements of competitors. Next is to look for the unexpected. This involves constantly improving your business model, inculcating the changes that raise inside and outside the industry. Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bensimpfendorfer/2015/07/07/the-agility-factor-in-asias-competitive-markets/

Evidences showed that recruitment have not been so easy during past years. Recruiting new employee requires a huge investment for most companies, specifically in managerial or professional role, which absorbs large proportion of company’s revenues. In the presence of big data, planning and strategies can improve recruitment process. US financial services company used big data analytics to examine the performance of employees. What they observed was that top performers were mostly those who had higher education. Office equipment manufacturer Xerox used analytics to study the performance and profile of candidates recruiting for its call centers which reduced the staff turnover of 20%. Big data is attracting employees and with the help of some tools such as Cornerstone and TalentBin (tools to crunch data) made it easier to find candidate for the right position. Online recruitment services are also enjoying the benefits of big data. Say for example it made easier to look at what are the areas of interest, average spending, experience, location of service. So, it is easier to plan ahead and prioritize. Read more at:

http://www.smartdatacollective.com/bernardmarr/327498/how-big-data-changing-recruitment-forever

Hadoop, for many years, was the leading open source Big Data framework but recently the newer and more advanced Spark has taken over. Spark is reported to be 100 times faster although it lacks its own distributed storage system. For this reason many projects involve installing Spark on top of Hadoop, where Spark’s advanced analytics can make use of data stored using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).
What really gives Spark the edge is speed. Spark handles most of its operations ‘in memory’- copying them from the distributed physical storage into far faster logical RAM memory. Spark’s speed of handling advanced data processing tasks such as real time stream processing and machine learning is much more than what could be achieved by Hadoop. Faster dynamic data handling gives Spark the upper hand over Hadoop.
However it must be concluded that these two frameworks are not necessarily mutually exclusive and do not perform exactly the same tasks. In fact using both of them together can actually provide better results than using either one separately.

For more information visit:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/06/22/spark-or-hadoop-which-is-the-best-big-data-framework/

Today, enterprises have come a long way dealing with the big data challenges. But there are more to go. Revisiting a few of them would help understand the task ahead. Timo Elliott, innovation Evangelist for SAP, in his blog Business Analytics talks extensively about the following 5 challenges:

• There’s still a lot of technology to learn

• The right people are still hard to find

• The right business case is key

• Integrating with existing systems is more important

• New business models are the next big opportunity

For an enriching account of each of them follow the link http://timoelliott.com/blog/2015/05/top-big-data-challenges-revisited.html

All major corporates employ customer call centers to incline to the needs of their customers. A client usually calls the customer center and the first impression he receives is that of the service tended to him by the customer care representatives. So, organizations have started using automatic voice response systems to reduce the workload of their agents, attain to their customers round the clock and reduce operational costs. However, it has been found that many customers are disappointed with the automatic voice response systems due to various reasons. Companies need to design effective voice response systems that are brief and serve the needs of the customers. Find the detailed view point here: 

CRM systems are used in organizations all over the world to collect and maintain data about customers and prospects in a structured form. However, what about the huge amount of data that is present in vague formats before it is structured in CRM systems. "Content Intelligence" is a natural language processing system that extracts meaningful data from E-mails, reports, customer interaction meeting minutes and assigns metadata to the content for ease of access by the CRM system users. This reduces a lot of workload for them as they do not have to read through vast amounts of customer interaction data. For more visit:

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/harnessing-unstructured-data-for-crm-68008

With every passing day it is becoming very important to safeguard data by companies both small and big. It can be done in the following ways:
1. Prioritize the issue – The issues must be computed and addressed regularly.

2. Understand what your data assets are – It will be beneficial if the data assets of a company are identified beforehand.

3. Learn about what you are up against – The Company should have at least an idea on how the hackers might steal or compromise the data.

4. Communicate issues with employees – The employees should be encouraged to take up habits that reduce data breaches and awareness should be spread.

5. Be ready to react – The Company and its IT experts should be alert and ready to react in any emergency situation.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/keithrbr/326717/5-tips-protecting-your-data-assets-more-effectively

These days recruiting a new employee accounts for a huge investment by the company. A major section of the company’s revenue is spent on staff salaries. Thus with improvement in technology, improved strategies and planning can be used in the recruitment process.
Klout scores are used by companies to rank users according to their social influence, especially for recruitments in sales and marketing roles. Gild is another service used in the field of technical programming jobs. In this, service software development professionals are assessed based on their contribution to public and open sources and their experiences in the past.
Thus Big Data helps in eliminating the guess work in the recruitment process thus finding a more scientific approach of recruiting staff.
Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/bernardmarr/327498/how-big-data-changing-recruitment-forever

Market intelligence can be used to assist almost every decisions faced by a company. Market intelligence helps a company to increase revenue, profit or market share. Three basic steps on how to go about gathering market intelligence and what types of market intelligence will deliver useful insights are:§ Don’t reinvent the wheel –A huge amount of learning can be gathered using workshops specially if guided by skilled external moderator.
§ Choose your battleground – Clearly stating your key objective will help in your business plan and actions will be taken.
§ Don’t stop digging –It is not only important that market intelligence is acted upon when it is collected but also a constant feedback is needed. Read more at: https://www.b2binternational.com/publications/guide-to-market-intelligence/

Data is collected through various paid, owned and earned media channels. Currently, B2B companies have started to emerge which is indeed a good news for marketers. Forward-looking media companies are investing to furnish superior quality prospects and performance data in order to generate new customers. They are as follows:

1. Data as the new media and marketing currency - Media companies uses data in association to their content and customer's marketing assets.
2. Behavioral prospect data and signal intent - It helps to figure out the best opportunities by encouraging prospects in a more targeted manner.
3. Company content consumption data for account-based marketing - It aims to target companies that B2B marketers finds ideal for their product.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/your-best-marketing-data-provider-may-be-right-underneath-your-nose-01264168

Social media has grown in recent decades and has seriously affected the social culture as well as the industries. It acts as a stimulus for success by qualifying people and encouraging new ideas. Social media has also great impacts on the sports industry. Nowadays every team, league and sports association has a profile on Twitter. The fans gather on Twitter before, during and after the games and hence a team or an athlete's behavior on social media directly affects fan's insight. Currently, a hashtag is associated with all sports show and event and this helps to build relationship with the audience. It acts as a platform for obtaining news, engaging in discussions and enfranchising brands.

To know more about this study, please follow the link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonydimoro/2015/07/02/the-growing-impact-of-social-media-on-todays-sports-culture/

The Internet Of Things (IOT) ) affects the way in which the enterprises interact with their customers. With the sole motive of customer satisfaction, it is crucial to note how the future would appear for the customers and the best ways of satisfying them and they are as follows:

• It is recommended to go for smooth transformation of customer experience and provide the customer with maximum profit. Focus groups and customer feedback helps to maintain it.
• Usually customers take time to embrace new technology and hence provision of information would facilitate easy usage.
• The platform is also important because a big platform can destroy a customer experience and relationship.
• It is necessary to get initials and continuous stakeholders as they will generate speed into the project.                                                                   

Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7667-planning-for-a-future-state